Locke's Moral Philosophy

First published Fri Oct 21, 2011

Locke's greatest philosophical work, An Essay Concerning Human
Understanding, is generally seen as a defining work of
seventeenth-century empiricist epistemology and metaphysics. The moral
philosophy developed in this work is rarely taken up for critical
analysis, considered by many scholars of Locke's thought to be too
obscure and confusing to be taken too seriously. The view is not only
seen by many commentators as incomplete, but it carries a degree of
rationalism that cannot be made consistent with our picture of Locke
as the arch-empiricist of his period. While it is true that Locke's
discussion of morality in the Essay is not as well-developed as
many of his other views, there is reason to think that morality was
the driving concern of this great work. For Locke, morality is the one
area apart from mathematics wherein human reasoning can attain a level
of rational certitude. For Locke, human reason may be weak with
regards to our understanding of the natural world and the workings of
the human mind, but it is exactly suited for the job of figuring out
human moral duty. By looking at Locke's moral philosophy, as it is
developed in the Essay and some of his earlier writings, we
gain a heightened appreciation for Locke's motivations in
the Essay, as well as a more nuanced understanding of the
degree of Locke's empiricism. Further than this, Locke's moral
philosophy offers us an important exemplar of seventeenth-century
natural law theory, probably the predominant moral view of the
period.

There are two main stumbling blocks to the study of Locke's
moral philosophy. The first regards the singular lack of
attention the subject receives in Locke's most important and
influential published works; not only did Locke never publish a work
devoted to moral philosophy, but he dedicates little space to its
discussion in the works he did publish. The traditional moral concept
of natural law arises in Locke's Two Treatises of
Government (1690) serving as a major plank in his argument
regarding the basis for civil law and the protection of individual
liberty, but he does not go into any detail regarding how we come to
know natural law nor how we might be obligated, or even motivated, to
obey it. In his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (first
edition 1690; fourth edition 1700, hereafter referred to as the
Essay) Locke spends little time discussing morality, and what
he does provide in the way of a moral epistemology seems
underdeveloped, offering, at best, the suggestion of what a moral
system might look like rather than a fully-realized positive moral
position. This brings us to the second major stumbling block: What
Locke does provide us by way of moral theory in these works is diffuse,
with the air of being what J.B. Schneewind has characterized as
“brief, scattered and sometimes puzzling” (Schneewind
1994, 200). This is not to suggest that Locke says nothing specific or
concrete about morality. Locke makes references, throughout his
works, to morality and moral obligation. However, two quite distinct
positions on morality seem to emerge from Locke's works and it is
this dichotomous aspect of Locke's view that has generated the
greatest degree of controversy. The first is a natural law
position, which Locke refers to in the Essay, but which finds
its clearest articulation in an early work from the 1660s, entitled
Essays on the Law of Nature. In this work, we find Locke
espousing a fairly traditional rationalistic natural law position,
which consists broadly in the following three propositions: first, that
moral rules are founded on divine, universal and absolute laws; second,
that these divine moral laws are discernible by human reason; and
third, that by dint of their divine authorship these rules are
obligatory and rationally discernible as such. On the other hand, Locke
also espouses a hedonistic moral theory, in evidence in his early work,
but developed most fully in the Essay. This latter view
holds that all goods and evils reduce to specific kinds of pleasures
and pains. The emphasis here is on sanctions, and how rewards and
punishments serve to provide morality with its normative force. Both
elements find their way into Locke's published works, and, as a
result, Locke seems to be holding what seem to be incommensurable views.
The trick for Locke scholars has been to figure out how, or even if,
they can be made to cohere. The question is not easily settled by
looking to Locke's unpublished works, either, since Locke also
seems to hold a natural law view at some times and a hedonistic view at
others.

One might conclude, with J.B. Schneewind, among others, that
Locke's attempts at constructing a morality were
unsuccessful. Schneewind does not mince words when he writes the
following: “Locke's failures are sometimes as significant
as his successes. His views on morality are a case in
point” (Schneewind 1994, 199). Schneewind argues that the two
strands of Locke's moral theory are irreconcilable, and that this
is a fact Locke must have realized. This view is indeed an apt
representation of the frustration many readers have felt with
Locke's moral theory. Locke's eighteenth-century apologist,
Catharine Trotter Cockburn thought Locke provided a promising, but
incomplete, starting point for a positive moral system,
imploring, in her work “A Defense of Mr. Locke's Essay of
Human Understanding,”

I wish, Sir, you may only find it enough worth
your notice, to incite you to show the world, how far it falls short
of doing justice to your principles; which you may do without
interrupting the great business of your life, by a work, that will be
an universal benefit, and which you have given the world some right to
exact of you. Who is there so capable of pursuing to a
demonstration those reflections on the grounds of
morality, which you have already made? (Cockburn 1702,
36)

Locke's friend William Molyneux similarly implored Locke to
make good on the promise found in the Essay. In a letter
written to Locke on September 16th, 1693, Molyneux presses
Locke to work on a moral treatise once he has finished editing the
second edition of his Essay, writing as follows:

I am very sensible how closely you are engaged,
till you have discharged this Work off your Hands; and therefore will
not venture, till it be over, to press you again to what you have
promis'd in the Business of Man's Life, Morality.
(Locke 1742, 53)

Several months later, in December of the same year, Molyneux
concludes a letter by asking Locke about what other projects he
currently has on the go “amongst which, I hope you will not
forget your Thoughts on Morality” (Locke 1742, 54).

Locke never did produce such a work, and we might well wonder if he
himself ever considered the project a “failure”.
There is no doubt that morality was of central importance to Locke, a
fact we can discern from the Essay itself; there are two
important features of the Essay that serve to enlighten us
regarding the significance of this work in the development of
Locke's moral views. First of all, morality seems to have
inspired Locke to write the Essay in the first place. In
recounting his original inclination to embark on the project, he
recalls a discussion with “five or six friends”,
at which they discoursed “on a Subject very remote from
this” (Locke 1700, 7). According to Locke, the
discussion eventually hit a standstill, at which point it was agreed
that in order to settle the issue at hand it would first be necessary
to, as Locke puts it, “examine our own Abilities, and see, what
Objects our Understandings were, or were not fitted to deal
with” (Locke 1700, 7). This was, he explains, his first
entrance into the problems that inspired the Essay
itself. But, what is most interesting for our purposes is just
what the remote subject was that first got Locke and his friends
thinking about fundamental questions of epistemology. James Tyrell, one
of those who attended that evening, is a source of enlightenment on
this matter—he later recalled that the discussion concerned
morality and revealed religion. But, Locke himself refers to the
subjects they discussed that fateful evening as ‘very
remote’ from the matters of the Essay. That may well be,
but it is also true that Locke, in the Essay, identifies
morality as a central feature of human intellectual and practical life,
which brings us to the second important fact about Locke's view
of morality. Locke writes, in the Essay, that
“Morality is the proper Science, and Business of Mankind in
general” (Essay, 4.12.11; these number are, book,
chapter and section, respectively, from Locke's Essay).
For a book aiming to set out the limits and extent of human knowledge,
this comes as no small claim. We must, Locke writes, “know our
own Strength” (Essay, 1.1.6) and turn our
attention to those areas in which we can have certainty, i.e.,
“those [things] which concern our Conduct”
(Essay, 1.1.6). The amount of attention given to the question
of morality itself would seem to belie its primacy for Locke. The
Essay is certainly not intended as a work of moral philosophy;
it is a work of epistemology, laying the foundations for knowledge.
However, a very big part of the programme involves identifying what
true knowledge is and what it is we as humans can have knowledge about,
and morality is accorded a distinctive and fairly exclusive status in
Locke's epistemology as one of “the Sciences
capable of Demonstration” (Essay, 4.3.18). The only
other area of inquiry accorded this status is mathematics; clearly, for
Locke, morality represents a unique and defining aspect of what it
means to be human. We have to conclude, then, that the Essay
is strongly motivated by an interest in establishing the groundwork for
moral reasoning. However, while morality clearly has a position of the
highest regard in his epistemological system, his promise of a
demonstrable moral science is never realized here, or in later
works.

It seems we can safely say that the subject of morality was a
weighty one for Locke. However, just what Locke takes morality to
involve is substantially more complicated an issue. There are two broad
lines of interpretation of Locke's moral views, which I will
briefly outline here.

The first interpretation of Locke's moral theory is what we
might call an incompatibility thesis: Locke scholars Laslett, Aaron,
von Leyden, among others, hold that Locke's natural law theory is
nothing more than a relic from Locke's early years, when he wrote
the Essays on the Law of Nature, and represents a rogue
element in the mature empiricistic framework of the Essay. For
these commentators, the two elements found in the Essay seem
not only incommensurable, but the hedonism seems the obvious and
straightforward fit with Locke's generally empiricistic
epistemology. The general view is that Locke's rationalism
seems, for all intents and purposes, to have no significant role to
play, either in the acquisition of moral knowledge or in the
recognition of the obligatory force of moral rules. These
fundamental aspects of morality seem to be taken care of by
Locke's hedonism. Worse than this, however, is that the two views
rely on radically different epistemological principles. The conclusion
tends to be that Locke is holding on to moral rationalism in the face
of serious incoherence. The incompatibility thesis is supported by the
fact that Locke seems to emphasize the role of pleasure and pain in
moral decision-making, however it has difficulty making sense of the
presence of Locke's moral rationalism in the Essay and
other of Locke's later works (not to mention the exalted role he
gives to rationally-deduced moral law). Added to this, even in
Locke's early work, he seems to hold both positions
simultaneously. Aaron and von Leyden both throw up their
hands. According to von Leyden, in the introduction to his 1954
edition of Locke's Essays on the Law of Nature,

the development of [Locke's] hedonism and
certain other views held by him in later years made it indeed
difficult for him to adhere whole-heartedly to his doctrine of natural
law. (Locke 1954, 14)

In a similar vein, Aaron writes:

Two theories compete with each other in
[Locke's] mind. Both are retained; yet their retention means that a
consistent moral theory becomes difficult to find. (Aaron 1971,
257)

Yet, it is curious that Locke neither claimed to find these strands
incompatible, nor ever abandoned his rationalistic natural law
view. It seems unlikely that this view would be nothing more than
a confusing hangover from earlier days. Taking seriously
Locke's commitment to both is therefore a much more charitable
approach, and one that takes seriously Locke's clear commitment
to the benefits of rationally-apprehending our moral duties. An
approach along these lines is one we might call a compatibility
approach to the question of Locke's moral commitments. John
Colman and Stephen Darwall are two Locke scholars who have argued that
Locke's view is neither plagued with tensions nor incoherent.
Their common view is that the two elements of Locke's theory are
doing different work. Locke's hedonism, on this
compatibility account, is intended as a theory of moral motivation, and
serves to fill a motivational gap between knowing moral law and having
reasons to obey moral law. Locke introduces hedonism in order to
account for the practical force of the obligations arising from natural
law. As Darwall writes,

Thus, on this account, reason deduces natural law, but it is
hedonistic considerations alone that offer agents the motivating
reasons to act in accordance with its dictates.

This interpretation convincingly makes room for both elements in
Locke's view. A central feature of this interpretation is its
attention to the legalistic aspect of Locke's natural law
theory. For Locke, the very notion of law presupposes an
authority structure as the basis for its institution and its
enforcement. The law carries obligatory weight by virtue of its
reflecting the will of a rightful superior. That it also carries the
threat of sanctions lends motivational force to the law.

A slight modification of the compatibility account, however, better
captures the motivational aspect of Locke's rationalistic
account: Locke does, at times suggest that rational agents are not only
obligated, but motivated, by sheer recognition of the divine authority
of moral law. It is helpful to think of morality as carrying both
intrinsic and extrinsic obligatory force for Locke. On the one hand
moral rules obligate by dint of their divine righteousness, and on the
other hand by the threat of rewards and punishments. The suggestion
that morality has an intrinsic motivational force appears in the
Essays on the Law of Nature and is retained by Locke in some
of his final published works. It is, however, a feature of his view
that gets somewhat underappreciated in the secondary literature, and
for understandable reasons—Locke tends to emphasize hedonistic
motivations. Why this is will be discussed in
section 4. At this
point, however, it suffices to say that Locke's theory does not
have the motivational gap that the compatibility thesis
suggests—hedonism serves as a ‘back-up’ motivational
tool in the absence of the right degree of rational intuition of
one's moral duty.

In order to get a complete understanding of Locke's moral
theory, it is useful to begin with a look at Locke's natural law
view, articulated most fully in his Essays on the Law of
Nature (written as series of lectures he delivered as Censor of
Moral Philosophy at Christ Church, Oxford). Two predominant
features of Locke's natural law theory are already well-developed
in this work: the rationalism and the legalism. According to
Locke, reason is the primary avenue by which humans come to understand
moral rules, and it is via reason we can draw two distinct but related
conclusions regarding the grounds for our moral obligations: we can
appreciate the divine, and thereby righteous, nature of morality
and we can perceive that morality is the expression of a
law-making authority.

In the Essays on the Law of Nature, Locke writes that
“all the requisites of a law are found in natural
law” (Locke 1663–4, 82). But, what, for Locke, is required for
something to be a law? Locke takes stock of what constitutes law in
order to establish the legalistic framework for morality: First, law
must be founded on the will of a superior. Second, it must perform the
function of establishing rules of behavior. Third, it must be binding
on humans, since there is a duty of compliance owed to the superior
authority that institutes the laws (Locke 1663–4, 83). Natural law is
rightly called law because it satisfies these conditions. For
Locke, the concept of morality is best understood by reference to a
law-like authority structure, for without this, he argues, moral rules
would be indistinguishable from social conventions. In one his
later essays, “Of Ethic in General”, Locke writes

[w]ithout showing a law that commands or forbids
[people], moral goodness will be but an empty sound, and those actions
which the schools here call virtues or vices may by the same authority
be called by contrary names in another country; and if there be
nothing more than their decisions and determinations in the case, they
will be still nevertheless indifferent as to any man's practice, which
will by such kind of determinations be under no obligation to observe
them. (Locke 1687–88, 302)

For Locke, then, moral law is, by definition, an obligatory set of
rules, because it is reflects the will of a superior
authority.

Moral rules are obligatory because of the authority structure out of
which they arise. But, this is not the only story Locke has to
tell regarding the nature of our obligation to divine moral dictates.
The set of moral rules that reason deduces are taken by Locke to be
reflective of human nature. The rules that govern human conduct
are specifically tailored to human nature, and our duty to God involves
realizing our natures to the fullest degree. There is a noticeable
degree of teleology in Locke's theory, which is worth pausing to
consider in its content and its implications.

In the Essays on the Law of Nature, Locke draws a
connection between the natural law governing human action and the laws
of nature that govern all other things in the natural world; just as
all natural things seem nomologically determined, so human beings are
likewise law-governed. Humans are not determined to the same
degree as other physical and biological entities, but we are beholden
to God to ensure that our lives follow a certain path. Natural law is,
Locke writes, a “plan, rule, or … pattern” of life
(Locke 1663–64, 81). Locke's early view has a teleological strain
typical of the Aquinian (and thus Aristotelian) tradition. In
fact, Locke does not shy away from this teleological angle,
acknowledging this inheritance when he writes of Aristotle's that
he

rightly concludes that the proper function of
man is acting in conformity with reason, so much so that man must of
necessity perform what reason prescribes. (Locke 1663–64,
83)

Locke considers moral duty to be tailored to human nature, a set of
laws specific to humanity and governing our actions according to God's
will. These laws are not only discoverable by reason, but in order to
fulfill our function, humans are required to make use of reason to
this very end. This view resurfaces in the Essay, where Locke
writes the following:

it will become us, as rational Creatures, to
imploy those Faculties we have about what they are most adapted to,
and follow the direction of Nature, where it seems to point us out the
way. (Essay, 4.12.11)

The way it points us, he goes on to explain, is in the direction of
our “greatest interests, i.e., the Condition of our eternal
Estate” (Essay, 4.12.11). The greater effort we each
make in refining our rational faculty, the more clearly each of us
will discern the proper path to eternal salvation.

This teleological element may seem somewhat out of step with
Locke's unqualified empiricistic rejection of teleological
metaphysics in the Essay. However, it is important to
bear in mind that the teleological aspects of Locke's moral
theory do seem to be serving a very specific purpose. Locke seems to be
aiming to establish a natural-theological basis for natural law.
Why would this be so crucial for Locke?

Locke is grounding human conduct within a general framework of laws
originating in God's divine command. This is not just a
nomologically-ordered universe, but one, as we have seen, that reflects
the interests of “a powerful and wise creator…who
has made and built this whole universe and us mortals” (Locke
1663–64, 103) Humans are obligated to obey God's laws since God
is a superior to whom we owe “both our being and our
work” (Locke 1663–64, 105) As such, we are obligated to
show obedience to the “limits he prescribes” (Locke
1663–64, 105). The laws governing our nature are discovered by
reason and their content is specifically suited to human nature.
Thus, for Locke morality is clearly and necessarily anthropocentric,
understood by reference to human nature. But moral rules are, above
all, an expression of God's will. It is this latter aspect
of morality that binds us to abide by the dictates of morality.
Moral obligation is a matter, for Locke, of obedience to the rightful
authority of God.

There are two baseline assumptions of Locke's moral thinking:
morality is universal and it is something that can be understood
clearly and unequivocally by human reason—when Locke imagines us
rationally-discovering natural law, he envisions us applying a rigorous
set of logical principles to a set of clear and well-defined ideas
about human nature, God, and society. But, how exactly is this
done?

For one thing, this process looks a great deal like mathematical
reasoning. For Locke, moral rules are founded on a fundamental set of
principles, much like mathematical axioms. The fundamental principles
can be deduced rationally, and it is from these that we can further
derive all of our moral duties. Morality is, therefore,
demonstrable, a term indicating mathematical-style proofs wherein
conclusions are derived from axiomatic foundations. The moral status of
any action is then determined by comparing our behaviour against these
demonstrated rules. But, we might ask, what kinds of ideas are
moral ideas, and what sort of rationalist could Locke possibly
be? Locke is a well-known empiricist; for Locke, the mind is a
blank slate, the content of which is supplied exclusively from sensory
or reflective experience. Locke famously espouses this empiricistic
view in the Essay, but holds it quite clearly also in
Essays on the Law of Nature. In fact, however,
Locke's moral rationalism takes this empiricistic theory of ideas
as its starting point. Moral ideas, for Locke, are fundamentally
experiential in origin. They are not directly so, of course, since we
do not perceive something like justice or honesty directly. Moral
ideas are experiential, in the special Lockean sense that they are
complex ideas—products of the mind's ability to form
complex constructions from its simple directly-experiential contents.
For Locke, the interplay of reason and sensation works as follows:

reason is … taken to mean the discursive faculty of
the mind, which advances from things known to things unknown and
argues from one thing to another in a definite and fixed order of
propositions… The foundations, however, on which rests the
whole of that knowledge which reason builds … are the objects
of sense-experience; for the senses primarily supply the entire as
well as the chief subject-matter of discourse and introduce it into
the deep recesses of the mind. (Locke 1663–64, 101)

From perceptual simple ideas, we can generate complex moral
propositions. This seems like a tall order, and Locke offers very
little, in any of his works, by way of actually putting this moral
reasoning process to work. However, that is not to say that Locke is
silent in this regard. There are places in his writings where Locke
takes us through some moral demonstrations.

In the Essays on the Law of Nature, for example, Locke
claims that, based on sensory experience, we can assert the
extra-mental existence of perceptible objects and all their perceptible
qualities. All such qualities can be explained by reference to
matter in motion. What is also clear to the senses, Locke argues, is
that this world of moving objects exhibits a nomological regularity, or
as Locke puts it, a “wonderful art and regularity” (Locke
1663–64, 103). Such regularity and beauty leads the contemplative
mind to consider how such a world could have come about. Such
contemplation would lead any rational being to the conclusion that the
world cannot be the result of chance, and must therefore be the product
of a creative will. Note that Locke is here trying to demonstrate
for us just how sensation and reason work together. The mind
moves from ideas of sensation to what Locke considers logical
conclusions regarding the creative force behind the world we
experience. But, our understanding of natural law is not founded solely
in sensory experience. Through reflection, which is an
introspective kind of perceptual experience for Locke, humans can
gain ideas of our own nature and faculties that serve to complete our
understanding both of God and of God's creative will. This
reasoning goes as follows—the creative being, which sensation
indicates must exist, cannot be less perfect than human will,
nor can it be human, because our ideas of reflection tell us
that humans are not, and cannot be, self-causing. Reason must
conclude, then, that the world is created by a divine will—a
superior power, which can bring us into existence, maintain us, or take
us away, give us great joy or render us in great pain. Locke concludes
as follows:

with sense-perception showing the way, reason can
lead us to knowledge of a lawmaker or of some superior power to which
we are necessarily subject. (Locke 1663–4, 104)

From this deduction regarding
divine purpose and authority, humans can conclude that they are
obligated to render “praise, honour, and glory” to
God. Beyond this, the rational agent can deduce, through
reflection upon her own constitution and faculties, that her natural
impulses to protect and preserve her life, and to enter into society
with others are faculties with which she has been uniquely equipped by
God and by which she is considered specifically human. These must
constitute the basis of the principles and duties governing her
conduct—her “function appears to be that which nature has
prepared … [her] to perform” (Locke 1663–64, 105). Thus,
by a series of steps from perception to reasoning about that perceptual
experience, we are, Locke concludes, able to define our moral duties
and regulate our conduct accordingly.

In the Essay, Locke develops this idea of the rational
deduction of natural law somewhat further, setting it in the context of
a more mature and coherent theory of ideas than we find in the
Essays on the Law of Nature. In the Essay, moral
ideas assume a particular significance owing to their place in
Locke's general taxonomy of ideas. For Locke, all the basic
contents of the mind are simple ideas. These are formed by the mind
into what Locke terms complex ideas, which are combinations of simple
ideas made in the pattern of our perceptions of things in the extra
mental world, or according to a pattern created by reason alone. Moral
ideas fall into the second category of complex idea, falling under the
technical heading complex ideas of modes. Modes are a
specific kind of complex ideas, created by the mind from simple ideas
of sensation or reflection, but referring to no extra-mental
reality. They are not intended as natural kinds, but are products
of the mind alone, referring to purely conceptual archetypes.
They are best understood in contradistinction to ideas of substances,
which are created by the mind but aim to mirror the real essences of
extra-mental things—for example, the idea cat is
intended to capture a kind of thing in the world that has a specific
set of perceivable characteristics. Ideas of substances fail in
mirroring reality, however, as they can never be complete
representations of the world outside the mind. Modal ideas, on
the other hand, are a special kind of idea for Locke, and actually hold
out the promise for real knowledge. Modal ideas are ideas by
which we fully grasp the real essence of things, because the mind, in
some sense, is the originator of them (I will return to this in the
next paragraph). The idea of a triangle is a modal idea, made by
reason and knowable in its essence with complete accuracy. The idea of
a triangle is a product of the mind, and does not refer to anything
outside the mind—i.e., any external archetype. The kinds of
ideas that fall into this category are the idea of God, mathematical
concepts, and, most importantly for our present purposes, moral
concepts. Locke writes,

I am bold to think, that Morality is capable of
Demonstration, as well as Mathematicks: since the precise real
Essence of the things moral Words stand for, may be perfectly known;
and so the Congruity, or Incongruity of the Things themselves, be
certainly discovered, in which consists perfect knowledge.
(Essay, 3.11.16)

Moral rules, for Locke, are knowable with the same degree of
certainty as “any Demonstration in Euclid”
(Essay, 4.3.18).

This might seem to be a tall order when considering the controversy
generated by beliefs about moral rules, yet Locke clearly believes that
moral rules can, with the right mental effort, yield indisputable
universal laws. Locke offers an example of how this might work,
by analyzing the moral proposition Where there is no property,
there is no injustice. In order to see the demonstrable
certainty of this claim, we have to examine the composite ideas and how
those agree or disagree with one another. The idea of property,
first of all, is a right to something. The idea of injustice,
considered next, is a violation of that right. Given these
definitions, which Locke thinks are arrived at by careful attention to
definition, it is a rational deduction that injustice cannot exist if
there is no property to be violated. Injustice and property must,
by definition agree. This is a clearly demonstrable rule,
according to Locke, deduced from clear and adequately conceived ideas.
The only other example Locke offers is the proposition No
Government allows absolute Liberty. Government, according to
Locke, is the establishment of society upon certain laws, requiring
conformity. Absolute liberty is allowing anyone to do as they
please. These are modal ideas, according to Locke, and thus known
with complete adequacy. As such, it is possible for the rational
individual to see clearly that the ideas of absolute liberty and
government cannot agree. Of course, most people will argue that these
rational deductions rely upon definitions that are debatable. This
would not seem to be helped by the fact that, for Locke, modal ideas,
like all complex ideas, are put together by the mind; while complex
ideas of substance are constructed on the pattern of perceivable
objects, modal ideas are, Locke explains, “put together at the
pleasure of our Thoughts, without any real pattern they were taken
from” (Essay, 4.4.12). This might seem to pose a problem
for Locke's moral theory, according to which moral laws are just
as necessary as mathematical principles. However, Locke is not worried
about any relativistic implications. For Locke, any disagreement
about definitions of concepts like property, justice or murder, result
from insufficient reasoning about the simple ideas that comprise our
moral ideas, as well as bias, prejudice and other irrational
influences. For Locke, it is precisely because these ideas refer
to nothing outside the mind that they can be universally-conceived and
adequately understood. Just as the notion of triangularity is
known perfectly because it does not depend upon the existence of
triangles outside the mind, so justice is understood perfectly because
it is not using some extramental archetype as its inspiration. He
writes,

the Truth and Certainty of moral Discourses
abstracts from the Lives of Men, and the Existence of those Vertues in
the World whereof they treat. (Essay,
4.4.8)

Mathematical concepts are impervious to bias, prejudice or
otherwise-idiosyncratic definitions and their relative properties are
clear to anyone who understands them perfectly. While many would
contend that moral ideas are simply too controversial to fit a
proto-mathematical picture, Locke would respond that they seem
controversial only because many of us have not taken the time to
consider moral ideas in an objective and analytical light. If we
were to do so, he argues, we could come to know moral rules with
certainty.

Locke, in fact, adds something of a meta-moral dimension to this
epistemological point by suggesting that as rational beings it is our
“proper Imployment” to contemplate morality. In Book
IV of the Essay, where Locke concludes that morality is, like
mathematics, a human science (and, properly-speaking, knowledge), Locke
draws a teleological lesson—since we are clearly fitted with the
capacity for discerning our moral duty, then that is what we ought to
do: “I think I may conclude, that Morality is the
proper Science and Business of Mankind in general.”
(Essay, 4.12.11) Humans must, he argues, employ reason
in the pursuit of that which “they are most adapted to, and
follow the direction of Nature, where it seems to point us out the
way” (Essay, 4.12.11). The fact that many people do not
or cannot devote contemplative hours to their moral duties is something
Locke will consider in his account of moral motivation, however, the
key point here is that humans have a teleological makeup that allows
for rational certainty with regard to divine moral law.

Is having this degree of knowledge enough to motivate humans to act
accordingly—that is, does the sheer recognition of one's
duty have any sway in one's practical deliberations?

Locke's hedonism has a dual function in Locke's moral
theory. It accounts both for how we acquire the ideas of moral good and
evil that lie at the root of moral law and for the motivation
to comply with moral rules. A prominent feature of Locke's moral
legalism is his view that a law needs to carry the threat of sanctions
for it to have normative force. Locke holds this view on the
basis of his hedonistic theory of human motivation.

Locke develops his hedonistic account most extensively in the
Essay. According to this account, pleasure and pain are the
primary motivating factors for all human action and human
thought. Feelings of pleasure and pain accompany all our ideas,
for Locke, prompting us to act in response to our perceptual
experiences, and to move, in thought, from one idea to another.
If we had no accompanying feeling of delight or pain in the face
certain stimuli we would be unmoved to create music, eat when hungry,
or even shift our attention from one idea to any other—the
perception of rain would raise in us no different response than a sunny
day, the idea of one's children would inspire no related thoughts
of home or family, nor any discernibly different response from the idea
of children one does not know. Locke writes,

we should have no reason to preferr [sic] one Thought or
Action, to another; Negligence, to Attention; or Motion, to Rest. And
so we should neither stir our Bodies, nor employ our Minds; but let
our thoughts (if I may so call it) run a drift, without any direction
or design; and suffer the
Ideas of our Minds, like unregarded shadows to make their
appearances there, as it happen'd, without attending to
them. (Essay, 2.7.3)

Pleasure and pain are the
engines that make decisions, thoughts, and actions happen. This is not
merely coincidence, or chance, for Locke, but yet another example of
God's divine design. God has attached feelings of pleasure and
pain to our ideas, so the natural faculties with which humans are
endowed “might not remain wholly idle, and unemploy'd by
us” (Essay, 2.7.3).

Pleasure and pain form the basis of Locke's general theory of
motivation, but they are also the bedrock upon which our moral ideas,
and the motivation to moral goodness arise. Good and
evil reduce, for Locke, to “nothing but Pleasure or
Pain, or that which occasions or procures Pleasure and Pain to
us” (Essay, 2.28.5). A flower is good, because its
beauty raises feeling of affection or pleasure in us. Illness, on
the other hand, is an evil since it raises feelings of aversion in
those who have experienced illness in any of its many forms. A
good is whatever produces pleasure in us, or diminishes evil,
and an evil is whatever produces pain or diminishes pleasure.
In this way, for Locke, the ideas of good and evil arise from natural
emotive responses to our various ideas. Now, these are not moral goods
and evils, but for Locke moral ideas are founded in the general ideas
we have of natural pleasures and pains. Locke designates no special
faculty by which we acquire the basic moral concepts of good and evil,
since these are merely a modification of our ideas of natural good and
evil; moral good and evil gain their special significance from
considering ideas of pleasure and pain in specific contexts.

Our ideas of moral good and evil do not, therefore, differ
qualitatively from natural good or evil. If this is the
case, however, one might ask what makes smelling a rose different from
helping those in need. For Locke, the answer lies in the
different context for pleasures and pains that distinguishes the moral
from the natural. While a natural good involves the physical
pleasure that arises from the scent of a rose, moral good is a
pleasure arising from one's conformity to moral dictates, and
moral evil is pain arising from the failure to conform. The
pleasure and pain are not qualitatively distinct, in these cases, but
they take on a special significance as a result of the considerations
that bring them about. Locke explains this in the Essay,
making sure to emphasize the purely contextual distinction between
moral and natural feelings:

Morally Good and Evil then, is only the
Conformity or Disagreement of our voluntary Actions to some Law,
whereby Good and Evil is drawn on us, from the Will and Power of the
Law-maker; which Good and Evil, Pleasure or Pain, attending our
observance or breach of the law, by the Decree of the Law-maker, is
that we call Reward or Punishment.
(Essay, 2.28.5)

Reward and punishment are a distinct
species of pleasure and pain, specifying the outcomes attending the
decrees of a rightful legislator. In this way, Locke's is a
straightforwardly legalistic account of the concepts of moral good and
evil. The practical force of moral laws arises when we compare our
actions against these laws, determine the degree to which they do or do
not conform to the law and consider the pleasure of pain we will
privately experience . In fact, for Locke, the very idea that one being
has rightful legislative power over another is predicated on the degree
to which the former being can effectively impose sanctions on the
latter:

It would be in vain for one intelligent Being, to set a
Rule to the Actions of another, if he had not in his Power, to reward
the compliance with, and punish deviation from his Rule, by some Good
and Evil, that is not the natural product and consequence of the
action itself. (Essay, 2.28.6)

God, according to Locke, is
just such a rightful superior with the

Goodness and Wisdom to direct our Actions to that which is
best: and he has the Power to enforce it by Rewards and Punishments,
of infinite weight and duration, in another Life.
(Essay, 2.28.8)

Locke is clearly committed to the idea that hedonistically-construed
outcomes are a necessary condition of any system of law and of
legislative authority itself. In this regard, Locke's views
are consistent throughout his corpus. It is worth noting that
Locke holds the same view in the early work, the Essays on the Law
of Nature, as he does in the more mature works quoted
above. In the Essays on the Law of Nature,
EssayV, Locke asserts that both God and the
soul's immortality “must necessarily be presupposed if
natural law is to exist” (Locke 1663–64, 113). The
inclusion of the immortality of the soul would seem to suggest the
centrality of rewards and punishments in the afterlife. Locke
continues by asserting that “law is to no purpose without
punishment” (Locke 1663–64, 113). For Locke, then, an
agent may well know the moral law, and that they are obligated to a
superior authority, but the obligatory force—i.e., what gives the
agent a reason for acting—is the structure of rewards and
punishments built into the system.

The question that has plagued Locke scholarship has been how, if at
all, the hedonistic elements of Locke's moral philosophy can be
reconciled with his rationalistic account, which suggests that reason
can discern morality's inherent righteousness and motivate
accordingly. Some scholars have concluded that Locke effectively
abandons the rationalism of his earlier writings by the time he is
writing the Essay, and that any such elements found therein
are mere holdovers of an earlier position. Von Leyden expresses
this view when he writes,

the development of [Locke's]
hedonism and certain other views held by him in later years make it
indeed difficult for him to adhere whole-heartedly to his doctrine of
natural law. (von Leyden, 1954, 14)

But does it? What I earlier
called the compatibilist thesis is held most prominently by scholars
John Colman and Stephen Darwall, according to whom Locke's
hedonism does not supplant the rationalist account of natural law and
moral obligation, but is, rather, intended to account for the
motivational force of moral law. In this way, the two views work
together for a complete moral picture. Darwall identifies the
distinction between rationally-derived versus legalistically-construed
moral obligation when he writes

Right is the central concept in Locke's natural law doctrine, but the
law could have no purchase on human conduct unless doing that which is
right were in some way productive of good. ‘Good’ is the
central concept in his moral psychology. (Colman 1983,
49)

Both Darwall and Colman
understand Locke as equating moral good and evil with rewards and
punishments, such that good and evil are the operative notions that
turn moral rules into moral imperatives for rational agents. Agents do
not have reasons for acting until they are aware of the rewards and
punishments that accompany natural law. On this interpretation,
rational insight regarding the righteousness of morality cannot, on its
own, motivate humans to act.

Divine sanctions are a constant feature of Locke's moral
philosophy, as we've seen, and the compatibilist interpretation
goes much further than the incompatibilist interpretation in capturing
the nuances in Locke's moral philosophy. However, there are
passages in Locke's work that suggest that moral rules carry an
obligatory force that can motivate rational agents irrespective of
rewards and punishments. When this further aspect of Locke's view
is taken into account, we can see that, for Locke, rewards and
punishments do not exhaust our reasons for obeying divine moral
rules.

In the Essays on the Law of Nature, Locke argues
that there are two different kinds of obedience to the law of a
superior authority, and that these are founded upon two distinct kinds
of obligation. The example is as follows:

Anyone would easily … perceive that there was one
ground of his obedience when as a captive he was constrained to the
service of a pirate, and that there was another ground when as a
subject he was giving obedience to a ruler; he would judge in one way
about disregarding allegiance to a king, in another about wittingly
transgressing the orders of a pirate or robber. (Locke
1663–64, 118)

At this point, Locke might be
understood to be distinguishing laws backed by a rightful authority
and laws that are not, in which the point is simply that there is no
obligation to the pirate, since his are not strictly laws at all on
Locke's definition of the term. However, Locke continues this passage
as follows:

in the latter case [subject to a pirate or robber], with
the approval of conscience, he rightly had regard only for his
well-being, but in the former [subject to a king], though conscience
condemned him, he would violate the right of another. (Locke
1663–64, 118)

Locke identifies two distinct grounds of
obedience. Recognizing that one's obligation to the king arises
from his rightful authority provides a grounds for obedience that is
absent in the case of obeying the pirate. My reasons for obeying the
pirate are hedonistic, but my reasons for obeying the king involve my
recognition of his rightful authority. Further on in the
same Essay, Locke explains that

We should not obey a king just out of fear, because, being
more powerful he can constrain (this in fact would be to establish
firmly the authority of tyrants, robbers, and pirates), but for
conscience' sake, because a king has command over us by right; that is
to say, because the law of nature decrees that princes and a lawmaker,
or a superior by whatever name you call him, should be obeyed.
(Locke 1663–64, 120)

Thus, sanctions are not the sole motivating factor for Locke. The
contrast Locke draws here is an important but commonly
underappreciated one; that is, acting for ‘conscience'
sake’ versus acting ‘out of fear’ as two
quite distinct grounds for obedience.

The question that remains is how Locke's notion of acting
‘for conscience' sake’ can be made sense of
within the context of Locke's general hedonistic account of
motivation. It might sound as though we are working with the kind
of purely rational motivating factor that Locke's hedonistic
theory clearly rejects; for Locke all human action is
motivated by considerations of pleasure and pain.

Recall that for Locke rewards and punishments are specific pleasures
and pains. Acting for conscious’ sake will necessarily involve
considerations of pleasure and pain, but of a kind quite distinct from
sanctions. For Locke, there is a kind of pleasure that attends
fulfilling one's moral duty that is quite distinct from
considerations of reward and punishment. In an essay, written in 1692,
entitled Ethica A (the first of two essays, the other entitled
Ethica B), Locke appeals to a kind of pleasure that attends
the fulfilment of one's moral duty:

Whoever spared a meal
to save the life of a starving man, much more a friend…but had
more and much more lasting pleasure in it than he that eat it. The
other's pleasure died as he eat and ended with his meal.
But to him that gave it him ‘tis a feast as often as he reflects
on it’. (Locke 1692, 319)

The pleasure here is of a special
kind. It is not the same as the pleasure we get from satisfying
our hunger, nor is it the pleasure that comes with pleasing an
authority or earning a reward. In fact, Locke explicitly
distinguishes it from the pleasure expected in the afterlife.
Fulfilling one's duty, for Locke, carries its own kind of
pleasurable motive—it makes us happy. As Locke writes,
further on in Ethica A, “Happiness…is annexed to
our loving others and to doing our duty, to acts of love and
charity” (Locke 1692, 319). Acting according to moral duty,
then, is motivated by feelings of pleasure that attend such
acts.

Why, then, does Locke so frequently emphasize the legalistic angle
of morality, which depends so heavily on the motivational force of
reward and punishment? In Locke's view, many people fail to
acknowledge, or be motivated by, the pleasure inherent to the
fulfilment of one's moral duty, and for these people (which, it
turns out, is most of us), God has provided extra incentive—the
rewards and punishments God attaches to our actions are a matter of
God's jurisdiction, quite apart from the pleasures of acting
dutifully, and in accordance with righteous moral dictates. As
Locke explains, God

brings in a necessity of another life…and so
enforces morality the stronger, laying a necessity on God's justice by
his rewards and punishments, to make the good the gainers, the wicked
losers. (Locke 1692, 319)

Sanctions, therefore, serve to enforce morality ‘the
stronger’ but are quite clearly secondary to the intrinsic
pleasures motivating dutiful action. So, conscience does not
motivate in and of itself, nor does the rational apprehension of
one's moral duty, but Locke identifies a species of pleasure
distinct from divine sanctions that makes his notion of acting for
conscious' sake perfectly consistent with his hedonism: to act
for conscious' sake is to be motivated by, and take pleasure in,
acting in accordance with one's moral duty.

Locke's emphasis can be explained by turning our attention to
a view of human nature that lies at the root of Locke's account.
Locke tends to be fairly pessimistic about the degree to which most
humans appreciate the inherent righteousness of morality. In fact,
Locke maintains a fairly low opinion of the willingness of most people
to actually take the time to appreciate the righteousness natural
law. If, he writes,

we will not in Civility allow too much Sincerity to the
Professions of most Men, but think their Actions to be
Interpreters of their Thoughts, we shall find, that they
have no such internal Veneration for these Rules, nor so
full a Perswasion of their Certainty and
obligation. (Essay, 1.3.7)

Humans are flawed in two
respects, according to Locke: we can fail to acknowledge our
obligations to natural law, and we can fail to comply even when these
obligations are acknowledged.

Locke's views regarding reason and intellectual duty can be
characterized as an ethics of belief, according to which our rational
abilities place a responsibility on each of us to examine the beliefs
we hold, and to be accountable for those things to which we
assent. This is particularly the case with respect to moral
rules, themselves, which are the ultimate guidelines for a good human
life. As Locke sees it, our capacities as rational agents are
insufficiently realized in many, if not most, cases. While the law of
nature is knowable by reason for Locke, it is not innately
known—Locke does not mean to suggest, as many theologians of his
day believed, that it “lies open in our hearts” (Locke
1663–64, 89). This would, he grants, be a

an easy and very convenient way of knowing, and the human
race would be very well off if men were so fully informed and so
endowed by nature that from birth they were in no doubt as to what is
fitting and what is less so. (Locke 1663–64, 90)

For Locke, however, this is just not the
case. It is clear, to him, that most people do not understand
their moral duty in any deep or robust way. To really know one's
moral duty is to be a moral agent, for Locke—moral knowledge is
something gained, by the individual, through rational discovery. Moral
truths are attainable with the proper use of reason:

there is some sort of truth to the knowledge of which man
can attain by himself and without help of another, if he makes proper
use of the faculties he is endowed with by nature. (Locke
1693–94, 89)

For Locke, knowledge, properly-speaking, requires that the
individual herself perceives the truth or falsity of any claim to which
she grants or withholds assent. An individual agent must perform
the intellectual analysis and demonstration herself in order to truly
know her moral duty. As it turns out, however, the greatest number of
people (particularly in Locke's day), are, he acknowledges

given up to Labour, and enslaved to the Necessity of their mean
Condition; whose lives are worn out, only in the Provisions of
Living. (Essay, 4.20.2)

For these people, the
opportunity for gaining a clear perception of their moral duty is very
narrow. Worse than this, there are people who have the means and
the leisure, but “satisfy themselves with a lazy
ignorance” (Essay, 4.20.6). These latter, Locke
asserts, have a “low Opinion of their Souls”
(Essay, 4.20.6). But, in neither case are people entirely off
the hook, according to Locke, who argues that no matter how busy one
is, there should always be time for thinking about our souls and
matters of religion. If one fails to do this, then one is relying for
one's salvation and self-realization upon the mere current of
opinion or the untrustworthy word of others. Locke asks if this
can provide

sufficient Evidence and Security to every Man, to venture
his greatest Concernments on; nay, his everlasting Happiness, or
Misery. (Essay, 4.20.3)

The failure to do so is a kind
of moral failing for Locke, one that gains its normative force from the
teleogical imperative attending our rational natures:

God has furnished Men with Faculties sufficient to direct
them in the Way they should take, if they will but seriously employ
them that Way, when their ordinary Vocations allow them the
Leisure. (Essay, 4.20.3)

Again, Locke is not suggesting that we do this
from considerations of rewards and punishments, but because it is the
fulfillment of our divinely-created natures. Despite failures to
comply, the normative force of morality is undeniable, for Locke, on
these teleogical grounds. Though Locke seems to believe that our
failings with regards to moral knowledge result from a failure to
engage our minds in the right direction, he does however
acknowledge that the discovery of moral truths is difficult and
laborious. And this is where sanctions come into play.

Sanctions are not necessary to natural law if we consider it
strictly as a system of divine rules. However, sanctions
are necessary when morality functions as law.
Sanctions are mechanisms for enforcement, where inherent motivating
factors are either absent or underappreciated. Consider, as an example,
the moral duty to care for one's children. For most people, this
carries inherent obligatory force arising from its being obviously good
and necessary. Where a person fails to appreciate the inherent
force of this duty, however, laws exist that require parents to provide
the means of life and education for their children, and such laws
stipulate compliance under threat of sanctions. To call the first
instance a law seems unnecessary, but we can clearly see how the
concept of a rule of law distinguishes the latter case. Sanctions
provide motives when individuals fail to act on the responsibilities
reason should on its own reveal and thereby compel. In the Essays
on the Law of Nature, Locke writes,

Those who refuse to be led by reason and to own that in
the matter of morals and right conduct they are subject to a superior
authority may recognise that they are constrained by force and
punishment to be submissive to that authority and feel the strength of
him whose will they refust to follow. (Locke 1663–64,
117)

Sanctions thus ensure that people who
‘refuse to be led’ by reason abide by the dictates of
natural law; in this way, sanctions ensure that divine moral rules
function as a system of law.

When Locke speaks of moral law, he frequently alludes to
sanctions. Morality can motivate without sanctions, but
it cannot ensure general compliance in the way that a system of law
can. God's imposition of sanctions is thus strictly
instrumental. They are not intrinsic to a system of morality, but
they are necessary when the obligatory force of moral rules is not
adequately understood. The special role of sanctions as a means
of shoring up moral compliance is articulated by Locke in several of
his writings. In the 1680 essay Of God's Justice,
he writes

though justice be also a perfection which we must
necessarily ascribe to the supreme being, yet we cannot suppose the
exercise of it should extend further than his goodness has need of it
for the preservation of his creatures in the order and beauty of the
state that he has placed each of them in. (Locke 1680,
278)

God metes out justice in the form of sanctions as a means of
ensuring social order and peace; sanctions ensure social good:

[God's] justice is nothing but a branch of his goodness, which is fain
by severity to restrain the irregular and destructive parts from doing
harm; for to imagine God under a necessity of punishing for any other
reason but this, is to make his justice a great imperfection.
(Locke 1680, 278)

In one of his more mature works, The Reasonableness of
Christianity, Locke makes the point several times, that moral law,
with its attendant rewards and punishments, was articulated as a means
of ensuring obedience. Humans appreciate the intrinsic righteousness of
virtuous acts, which are generally granted the highest degree of
approbation. However, virtuous behaviour is assured only when it
is in an agent's interests to comply. It is clear to reason that
we ought to act virtuously, but it is easy enough for many of us to
eschew virtuous actions when they either present hardships or sacrifice
of any kind or when they will not clearly benefit our own interests:

The generality could not refuse [virtue] their esteem and
commendation; but still turned their backs on her, and forsook her, as
a match not for their turn. That she is the perfection and excellency
of our nature; that she is herself a reward, and will recommend our
names to future ages, is not all that can now be said of her.
(Locke 1736, 247)

In order to remedy this problem, Locke explains, God
attached clear and explicit sanctions (made plain through revelation)
to ensure that the virtuous course of action will always be the more
attractive option:

[Virtue] has another relish and efficacy to persuade men, that if they
live well here, they shall be happy hereafter. Open their eyes upon
the endless, unspeakable joys of another life, and their hearts will
find something solid and powerful to move them. The view of heaven and
hell will cast a slight upon the short pleasures and pains of this
present state, and give attractions and encouragements to virtue which
reason and interest, and the care of ourselves, cannot but allow and
prefer. Upon this foundation, and upon this only, morality stands
firm, and may defy all competition. This makes it more than a name; a
substantial good, worth all our aims and endeavours; and thus the
gospel of Jesus Christ has delivered it to us. (Locke 1736,
247)